Occupy Arrestees Forced to Poo, Pee Themselves While Detained by Cops in Vans, Buses in San Diego

While reports of illness, vandalism and lice don't exactly conjure images of the French Riviera in spring, it's all good compared to the head bashings of Oakland and the frostbite of New York. Angeleno occupiers on the City Hall lawn are practically getting their tans on in comparison.

In San Diego recently, occupiers even had to pee and poo in their own underpants. Seriously:

San Diego CityBeat reports this week that the San Diego Sheriff's Department admits that 50 protesters arrested during an Oct. 28 Occupy event at the local Civic Center were held and held and held without breaks.

As they waited, hands cuffed, apparently, in buses and vans, they weren't allowed to ... you know ... go. This was between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m. Just guessing here, but people out after 2 a.m. usually have been occupying bars and have to go.

And go some of them did. Occupoopy?

The department admits the bathroom malfunction in a statement obtained by the Weekly:

During that time there were no restroom facilities available for arrestees, forcing some of them to relieve themselves as they sat on the bus or van.

Oops. We are the 2 percent. The SDSD:

... This unfortunate result is very unusual and it is currently being reviewed. The Sheriff has directed that a Critical Incident Review be conducted internally. Also, the Sheriff's Department and the Police Department will conduct a mutual debrief to examine in detail how the operation was handled. From those reviews we will determine how to improve our practices to assure that this does not happen again.

The department even provides a link for those who had to piss themselves to file complaints.

L.A. Weekly staff writer Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.